My New Marketing Journal – Freelance Beginnings

My New Marketing Journey and Experience – Post 5

Confidence

The biggest thing about starting a freelance career and your own business is confidence. I was taking my HTML and CSS classes, and was having a blast with them. I went above and beyond for each assignment and taught myself things outside of class that I incorporated into my weekly assignments. I wanted to get my hands on everything.

When I first began teaching myself XHTML and CSS, and when I first began classes, I wasn’t confident in creating websites for people from scratch, by hand coding them, but I was confident in my social media and internet marketing abilities.

My First Client

One day I was just roaming around the house when one of my mom’s colleagues came over to discuss SoulCollage workshops. She was talking about her varying websites and how she wanted to start using social media to build her web presence. She didn’t know that I was doing the internet marketing internship, or taking web design classes, but she knew that I was really into the internet, and that I was a young, tech savvy girl who probably knew about social media, and she was right. She asked me if I wanted to help her with her social media, and I said yes.

I charged her $15 an hour. I learned a lot from working with her. When working with a client you should create a contract, and money should be discussed from the very beginning, otherwise you can find yourself working a lot of hours, and not getting paid. This happened to me, and I became frustrated that I was doing so much work, and not getting compensated.

It was a great experience that helped me see how I should interact with future clients, and what kind of things my clients may ask me, or what kind of things they may want. It helped show me the process of how to work with someone on brain storming, and coming up with a social media campaign and it taught me that a lot of people have different working styles. This experience also taught me that clear and consistent communication is very important when working with a client, and having structure and a system set up, like having a contract and a way of working can help with that.

One Failure led to Future Success

Our working relationship didn’t work out, but after that my mom decided that she wanted me to build her a new website, and she wanted me to create her a social media campaign, which has been going great. She is writing a book, Self-Love: The Only Diet That Works. I created her a website to promote her book, but it’s not only about her book. I created her a website that fosters a community, an interactive community that promotes self-love.

I felt bad charging my mom, so I was charging her $10 an hour, and I was doing a lot of free work, but I was doing it willingly because my mom already gives me so much. I owed my parents $500 dollars from traveling right after I graduated, so I worked that off at $10 an hour, and once I finished, my mom wanted to pay me more (and for me not to do free work for her), so I began to charge her $20 an hour, which became my new fee.

One of her friends who she met through a writing workshop also wrote a book, and she wanted a website to help promote and sell her book, A Seven Year Goodbye. So I created her website, created her a blog, and set up the very beginnings of a Twitter Profile for her. Every once in a while she’ll have me make updates, and is now thinking of revamping her website because she wants to incorporate a changed mission, other than her book.

For another client, a life coach, I helped create her a WordPress blog and showed her how to manage it. I also helped her create a Facebook Fan page and a LinkedIn profile. Here’s her blog: Spiritual Life Coaching

During this period, I also created a website for free for my aunt, a stretch therapist: stretch-trainer.com.

I’m taking two new web design classes this semester, CSS and Business of Web Development. In Business of Web Development, we are working on building a website for a Spanish/English bilingual newspaper, La Voz. We’re working in groups. I’m in a group of 5. I’m the head content developer, working with one other content developer. We also have a project manager, a designer, and an interactive media developer.

I just took on another client, one of my cousins, who is developing a clothing line. This will be my first e-commerce site.

Future Clients

When I told Pauline Laurent, the life coach, Margo Gallagher, the author of A Seven Year Goodbye, and my cousin who is creating the clothing line that I charge $20 an hour, they all told me “That’s it?”.

I have wanted to raise my prices and I’ve realized that all I have to do is ask. I could have told them that I charged more and they would have been fine with it, but it’s all about confidence. When I first began, I felt like I had to work my way up the price scale, and I still believe that, but $50 an hour is low scale for web design and social media, so $20 is way under the low-end price.

I have a list of 5, possibly 6 potential clients that I will be charging $30 an hour, and shortly after, I am going to move up to $40 an hour, and I know I’m worth it. 🙂

Ask and You’ll Receive

That’s what it comes down to, knowing your worth it, and having confidence. When doing business and interacting with others, you have to be clear and ask for what you want. Soon you’ll realize that you’ll usually get what you ask for. That’s what I’m starting to realize. That if I ask, I’ll receive.

When I started out charging, I felt like $15 an hour was so much, then $20 an hour. It’s a lot more than I made at a coffee shop, a book store, or a grocery store. Initially, I felt awkward asking for more, although I knew that the industry I’m in charges a lot more from their clients. $15 to $20 an hour felt like so much money, but as I started to think about my freelance work through the lens of running my own business, I realized that it’s not that much. Once I move out, I’ll need to pay for my rent. I pay for my classes and text books, which add up. I’ll soon need to start paying for my student loans, which is a lot. Then there’s all of the business fees, gas, online subscriptions, programs, etc – it all adds up, and then $20 to $15 an hour doesn’t seem like that much.

I’ve realized that there are a lot of people who want the services that I offer, and I know that this can and will become the thing that gives me financial freedom and the ability to support myself. I’m not there yet, but I know that day will come, and I know it will come sooner than later.

– Emelina Minero